Yonatan Zunger’s Blog

A lot of people have been avoiding discussing the Schiavo case for various reasons, but I think there’s something important enough here that it’s worth putting on the table. Today we’ve seen what one faction of the Republican party wants our country to be like, and there’s something in it that doesn’t sit right with me.

I’m certain that most of the people reading this have at least some conflicting emotions about this case. Chances are, either you, or a family member, or someone you know has had to make an important medical decision for someone. And especially when these decisions amount to life or death, they are agonizing.

President Bush said that when in doubt, we should err on the side of life. I disagree. I think that when in doubt, we should err on the side of personal responsibility. The government has many roles in health care, and sitting over the bedside making the decisions isn’t one of them. These decisions are, have been, and should be, the province of the people affected, of their families, and their physicians.

“But wait,” you may say, “it’s well and good to let things be a matter of personal responsibility when it comes to bank accounts. But here a life is at stake.”

…And this is the moment that personal responsibility counts for more, not less. We sometimes forget how often we entrust people with an enormous responsibility; consider who we let drive a car. (And remember that a car is three quarters of a ton of steel and fiberglass, moving at sixty miles an hour within a few feet of unprotected people. No factory would ever allow something like that.) We can’t just say that because it’s inside a doctor’s office, people are any less responsible for each others’ lives, especially for their loved ones.

The implication in the Legislature’s intervention in this case is that the government has the right, whenever it feels that you aren’t making the decision it wants you to make, to step in and make intimate decisions for you and your family. When the Liberals were talking about the risks of government policy on abortion or gay marriage, this was the real issue on the table; same when the Conservatives were talking about the risks of central government health care. It’s the risk that, once the government decides it has the right to intervene in your most intimate decisions, you’re going to end up with Congress voting on what sort of treatment you should have when you’re in the hospital.

(That last sentence would sound like a ridiculous exaggeration if it hadn’t happened just a few days ago)

Now, most of you probably have a gut feeling, one way or the other, about what should be done in the Schiavo case. But – unless you’re part of her immediate family, or you’re her attending physician and are working in consultation with them – it’s not your decision to make, any more than it would be their decision if you were the one in the bed.

It may be hard to put a life-or-death decision in the hands of someone else, especially when you strongly disagree with what they’re doing, but it’s sometimes necessary. The world can’t be run by an army of nannies, all looking over our shoulders; at some point, we have to trust that the people around us are responsible, have thought the moral issues through, and know the details of their own situation and can make their decision better than anyone else.

This is what I see as the heart of the Progressive philosophy – personal responsibility for yourself and your community. Society, family, and experience raised us to become people who can make these difficult decisions, because if we don’t make these decisions, there’s no-one else who can make them for us. Government is neither your mommy nor your daddy; it’s just us, and an agreement we made to work together on some issues. It can’t be an oracle of perfect justice, and it shouldn’t be an excuse for politicians to walk into the operating room.

It’s funny to see the Republican leadership, and a bunch of Democrats desperate to prove their right-wing credentials, stepping out to advocate the most extensive version of the Nanny State I’ve ever heard mentioned. I won’t go into Tom DeLay’s description of this as a political “windfall;” I think his ethics investigations speak clearly enough about the content of his character. But honest Conservatives who should know better are standing out there with him, getting ready to meddle in the lives of an innocent family because they’re hoping for some political benefit. Forgetting their core principles is not a way to get it – any more than it is for the Democrats who are out there with them. This matter is not the Federal government’s business, and we shouldn’t set a precedent any other way.